Scary sudden poweroff (was: Re: Yet another test kernel)

[Robin Colgrove]

"Derek T. Yarnell" wrote:

>
> I think i have asked this before but i am wondering again because i am not
> sure i got a good answer. I have a lombard powerbook and i have built my own
> kernel, used the one supplied with standard distribution made for the lombard and
> tried even your kernel Ben. Now the problem is that at a point the powerbook will
> just shut down mysteriously, i am not sure what is going on but i really can't pin
> point the actuall problem. I am wondering how many other people have seen this
> problem (my roomate has a lombard also and he also sees this problem) and if
> anyone has a fix that one can get around this or what?
>

This happened to me while I was riding in on the train, PowerBook (G3, non-bronze)
one one knee and "Running Linux" on the other (this is a great conversation starter,
by the way, but that's a thread for another time). I was just staring at the screen,
learning about the /proc directory when suddenly *fwip* the powerbook turned off. At
first I thought I must've knocked the battery or pushed the shutdown by mistake but
now I am certain I didn't touch anything. Then (having too recently read
"Cryptonomicon") I thought the train might have passed through some kind of powerful
RF field. The machine would not reboot. I got to my lab, plugged the machine into the
wall power and just let it sit there for a minute. Then it booted fine into macos,
saying -thankfully- that disk, battery and cpu were all ok. I was going to ask if
anyone else had seen this but Derek beat me to it.

robin colgrove

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